


Next Cycle

by LooNEY_DAC



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Cleanser Training, Cleansers at Work, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 11:46:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8531821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: A look at a Cleanse Cycle and the Cleansers executing it.





	1. Phase One: FIRE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aierdome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aierdome/gifts).



> A treat for this prompt:
> 
> "Thank you in advance. What I'd like is a story about Cleansers doing well, cleansing. Details (including presence of canon characters - Emil would be a good fit here - the exact plot, presence of other military forces like mages or Norwegian hunters) are entirely up to you. I don't mind the fic being explicit or gory, provided it's not explicit or gory for its own sake.
> 
> "The "do not want" list: crassness, humans being bastards, unhappy ending."

The nights were getting longer as summer faded into fall; a few nights, the burning, raging flames barely kept the chill at bay. The watching Cleansers kept their guard up, knowing one break-out could bring all their work to ruin.

Red-orange flames turned night into day. Perimeter guard Stig Lindström thought he heard something large moving behind the wall of flames and readied his weapon, waiting for a hideous flaming mass to charge out at him, but none did.

Lindström had been on the perimeter for his every waking shift of this cycle, even as the flame-wall inexorably advanced day by day. He would stand watch against the grossling threat until the campaign’s end or his own death, whichever came first, for that was what Sweden demanded of him.

This was the most extensive campaign the Cleansers had yet assayed, but their leader’s utter certitude of favorable results was even more infectious than the Illness. Nevertheless, this massive operation was straining each and every Cleanser to the utmost, Lindström not excepted. That was why Lindström had to stand this watch alone; his watch-partner, Ebba Gripenstedt, had been pressed into service with another squad after its losses had passed the breaking point, and there was no one to replace her.

The operation had strained the Cleansers’ stocks so that the perimeter guards were being armed with whatever Headquarters could scrounge up for them. Lindström risked a dubious look down at his Icelandic-made weapon, decorated garishly as it was with lightning bolts and those silly rune figures the Icelanders and their ignorant Norwegian fellows put so much stock in.

Brief as it was, Lindström’s downward glance had afforded any lurking assailants an opportunity to strike, and strike they did, in numbers that shocked the young Swede. They seemingly came from nowhere, too--their hides showed no trace of scorching, so how had they bypassed the raging inferno that should have stopped them?

There was no time to find out just yet, but the young Swede was perhaps more certain than he ought to be that he’d have the opportunity to discover the solution. Lindström fancied himself a bit of an artist with blades, both in close-quarter combat and in throwing. Tonight, he proved his fancies true. All twelve of his throwing-knives found their marks, and his hand-blade struck down many more before it snapped.

All the while, Lindström had been frantically blowing his whistle to call in what was known as the flying squad: a group of fellow Cleansers who could take care of breaches too large for a lone sentry to handle. There had been no sign of them yet, but that was to be expected; Lindström would just have to hold this assault off on his own until they could reach him.

Well, Lindström acknowledged wryly, it seemed he had no other choice but to trust the Icelandic weapon, strange as it was, with his life. Fortunately, the lone remaining troll was far enough away for him to use the weapon at its intended range.

The weapon made only a soft _phut_ , but the effect on the troll was both instant and dramatic. The hideous fiend fell to the ground and writhed, screaming. A few recognizable words mingled with the Rash-squeals, but the only half-coherent sentence it managed still made no sense. What on earth was “Don’t taze me, bro!” supposed to mean, anyway?

Eventually, though, the screaming stopped, even before the flying squad had reached his sector. Despite that, Lindström knew that he’d be hearing it in his nightmares henceforth.

When the flying squad finally arrived--it had only taken two and a half minutes since Lindström had begun blowing his whistle, though it had felt like several lifetimes to him--they and he made a fairly comprehensive survey of the area, as was the post-attack standard operating procedure, dispatching several more grosslings in the process. This was, of course, why the post-attack procedures were as they were; the Cleansers stuck to their routines, but the routines were made from hard-learned and often lethal experience.

Eventually, though, the flying squad was satisfied that there was no further immediate danger. For form’s sake, they detached one of their own to relieve Lindström and took Lindström back to the dispatch point with them, another part of their standard operating procedure. Lindström would spend the rest of his watch on the squad.

It was too bad about the blade, though. That had been a family heirloom; but all things must eventually give out. Lindström sighed and settled in around the small heater at the dispatch point, waiting for his watch to end.


	2. Phase Two: DEMOLITION

Knut Enell grinned as he slowly pulled the wires back to the detonator, taking care that they didn’t catch on anything as he did. Oh, how he loved making things blow up! Boom boom _boom_ boom boom, he hummed to himself. Were he the type to believe in gods, he’d assuredly go for whichever one it was who ruled explosions. _“Hail, Great and Mighty Ka-Plowie!”_ Knut thought with what the few Norwegians he’d known would have characterized as typical Swedish irreverence.

This sector had once contained a town; it had been a small town by Y0 standards but still a town, so there were plenty of nooks and crannies left over after the fires had swept through, though most needed hardly any actual explosives to render them useless as nests. This was both good and bad for a set of explosions enthusiasts such as Knut and his crew: good, because _explosions!_ ; bad, because each explosion carried a small but significant risk to the explosives-layer.

Of course, there could always be surprises; Knut had heard a number of his fellows passing around several versions of an oral legend that no doubt dated back (in one form or another) to the first few Cleanse cycles. It was about a demo unit like his that had found a more-or-less intact (depending on the version) shelter buried beside a cellar. Some versions had human survivors inside, either infected or immune; some had trolls; some had vicious murder-ghosts from Y0; and a few had the razing kill anyone unlucky enough to be inside, which was the most likely outcome, of course. Not that likelihood of the events ever stopped a good oral legend in its tracks, of course.

A few of the retellings had been done well enough to send shivers down Knut’s spine when he’d heard them, despite knowing them for what they were.

Knut set off his charges and looked over at Berndt-Otto Rebinder, the planner. Rebinder gave Knut the thumbs-up, and Knut moved on to the next target. Coming up: Explosion Number Three Hundred and Fifty-Eight.

Knut stroked his chin thoughtfully as he studied the next target, checking the reality of the situation against Rebinder’s plan of attack. This was also standard procedure, just in case the explosives-layer saw something the planner had missed in their evaluation; usually, though, the planner hadn’t missed anything significant, and so it was in this instance. With a final nod, Knut set to work with a will.

The demo squads tended to use detonators rather than fuses for their reliability and added control; too many accidents had happened when a fuse failed to work as it was supposed to for the Cleansers not to take action. Of course, accidents still happened now and again, which was why Knut never sacrificed safety for speed.

The next set of explosions didn’t sound right, and that unnerved Knut, as he knew that a wrong-sounding explosion usually started costing lives in short order. They were trying to collapse a cellar with earth all around; there shouldn’t be a hollow, reverberating-metal sound in that circumstance.

The charges had all detonated, so Knut signaled to Rebinder to cover him as he went to investigate in the open pit of loose earth and splinters that had been the cellar.

Knut let out a soft gasp when he saw the unearthed portion of what had obviously been a very large metal object buried next to the cellar. That really, _really_ looked like...

No. Knut shook his head, trying to knock the crazy idea loose, but it had taken root. Moving cautiously, he approached the tank-like thing (it had to be a tank; no-one was crazy enough to build shelters in a tiny Y0 town in Sweden) and began a thorough examination, looking desperately for _anything_ that would prove it wasn’t a shelter of some kind.

Knut was no more than a meter from the dirt-encrusted side when the knocking began...


	3. Phase Three: EXPOSURE

Lennart Magnusson was lost. The Grade B cat accompanying him, Per, was also ignorant of how to get back to the barracks, despite the contemptuous looks the cat was giving Lennart.

By the charred stumps sticking up through the snow, they were in a part of the new area that had once been a forest, but try as he might Lennart couldn’t recall where that would be in relation to the place from which they’d set out. He cursed a few times, just on principle, and Per made a noise that sounded like agreement.

“You know, it’s not wise to venture through a wood at night with only a cat as companion, Blessed Felines though they may be.”

Lennart nearly jumped out of his skin at the calm statement, but Per looked more relieved than anything. Lennart used the excuse for some more creative cursing as he turned to see who it was that had addressed him.

“My, my.” Amusement laced the words. “I don’t think I’ve heard _that_ one in quite a while.” The man was very grey; if he hadn’t spoken, Lennart would have dismissed him as just another charred stump. His hair was grey, though his face was somehow timeless; his rough-woven cloak and tunic beneath were grey; and somehow, the man himself exuded a sort of greyness that tinged everything in his immediate vicinity. His eyes were very bright and blue, however; right now, they glinted with humor at Lennart’s foul language.

“You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

Lennart finally said something printable. “Well, neither should you, sir; you’re not a Cleanser, and we’re in an Exposure Zone.” His brain finally caught up to him, and he groaned. “You didn’t find a breach in the fence--or even make one, did you?”

The man laughed again. “Don’t worry so, youth: no grossling will follow in my path. I’m merely revisiting one of my old haunts, and then I’ll be on my way. But it seems that you’re lucky that I’m in the area, or they might have stumbled on a frozen Cleanser rather than a frozen grossling come next spring.”

Per miaowed in agreement, at which Lennart rolled his eyes crossly. “You don’t need to rub it in, Per.” Then Lennart looked back up at the man. “Do you know where the nearest barracks is to be found, then, sir?”

If the man did know, Lennart would be duty bound to escort him there as a prisoner, where he’d be put into quarantine; such was the standing order for anyone found wandering in an Exposure Zone.

“Of course I do.” The man raised his hand to forestall Lennart’s next question. “And of course I shall walk over there with you, though you’ve really nothing to worry about.” He pointed with the raised hand, indicating a direction approximately seventy-five degrees off of Lennart’s former course. “It’s that way, perhaps half an old mile off. You’ve wandered rather out of your way, youth.”

Lennart sighed, turning in the direction the man had indicated, and once the two were side by side, they set off. An old-style _mil_ was around ten klicks, so half that would be rather more than an hour’s walk in this terrain. Lennart cursed some more under his breath, causing the man to chuckle.

The trip actually wasn’t all that bad; as they went, the man and Lennart began to swap stories, though most of Lennart’s weren’t nearly as good as his companion’s, except for that one about the demo team finding an intact shelter nearby. Still, the man seemed to enjoy hearing Lennart’s tales as much as Lennart enjoyed hearing his, so the hour or so passed in a convivial air rather than an adversarial one.

They were perhaps ten meters from the entrance when the man said, “And this shall be as far as I’ll go,” and stopped in his tracks.

Lennart stopped as well. “Are you really going to make me treat you with discourtesy, sir?” His voice was tired and dispirited; the notion that this man was rather a decent fellow, and one Lennart would feel bad about throwing into quarantine and possibly penal detention thereafter had been growing in Lennart’s mind over the course of their trek.

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Lennart.” The laugh in his voice should have annoyed Lennart, but it didn’t, somehow.

“MAGNUSSON!”

Lennart spun to face his commander, muttering curses under his breath and without moving his mouth.

“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO TELL ME WHY I SHOULDN’T SLAM YOU INTO THE STOCKADE AND THROW THE KEY AWAY!” Before Lennart could speak, she continued. “BETTER CLEANSERS THAN YOU HAVE DIED FROM SMALLER IDIOCIES THAN JUST WANDERING OFF INTO AN EXCLUSION ZONE!”

When she finally let him speak, Lennart had his answer ready. “I was going after this man, here--” he gestured behind him without breaking eye contact “--and brought him back for quarantine.”

“WHAT MAN ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? THERE’S NOBODY THERE! WE WATCHED YOU STUMBLE YOUR WAY BACK HERE FOR THE LAST HUNDRED METERS! NO ONE WAS WITH YOU THEN, AND NO ONE’S WITH YOU NOW! STOP TALKING NONSENSE!”

“But... but... but...” Lennart looked back at where the man had been, and saw nothing. The snow showed only his own and Per’s tracks; there was no sign the man had ever existed. “But, _no_...”

The confusion in Lennart’s face gave even his wrathful commander pause. “MAYBE... (ahem) Maybe we should go inside and talk about this.” In the end, she had to guide the still sputtering Lennart inside.

It was officially put down to “hypothermic hallucination”, as the medics recorded Lennart’s core temperature at 30.5C; the one who brought Lennart hot cider had the temerity to ask Lennart why he wasn’t dead. Per was not nearly so chilled. All the while, Lennart maintained that the man who’d walked him back to the barracks had truly been there.


	4. Phase Four: PURGE

Gustav Lindblom wiped the sweat from his brow before turning his attention back to the cats of his squad.

Bertil and Nils were the pick of the Grade A cats, and Gustav was well aware of how fortunate he was to have been assigned them, but sometimes even they could still be so... catty. They hadn’t worked together before, so each was trying for the alpha cat spot; it made for a trying experience for Gustav.

Anton, Ola and John, the other cats of the squad, tended to look on the infighting in a typically feline “I’m- _so_ -above-this” manner. Still, the squabbling slowed their squad quite significantly, so Gustav tried his best to reproach them; he got only contemptuous looks from all five cats. 

Being summarily dismissed as inconsequential by a bunch of cats got Gustav a bit irked, but when he moved towards the squabble, intending to break it up forcibly regardless of clawing or biting, something about his approach brought Bertil and Nils back to the business for which they’d gone into the Exposure Zone in the first place. All five cats went into action, fanning out in the search pattern so painstakingly drilled into them since their kittenhoods.

Great. Now Gustav wanted to throw something at something, and there was no suitable target for his frustration. Spotting an ashen stump out past where the cats were searching, he picked up a clod of whatever and hurled it.

All five cats immediately puffed up, hissing and spitting at the stump. They were quite right to do so; the grossling hiding in the stump was most displeased at the rude awakening, but it was far enough away for Gustav to bring it down in mid-air. He was already blowing his whistle to alert the other squads that there had been an incident.

Hopefully an incident was all it was, rather than a breach. The sheer scope of this campaign was a risk in and of itself: the larger the Exposure Zone, the larger its perimeter and the greater the possibility of a breach somewhere along the line. Theoretically, the fires should have driven all the grosslings into the sea, while electrified walls kept any others from slipping back into the new Exposure Zone. While the walls had always kept the trains safe during the daytime, they had yet to prove themselves on such a scale as this.

For that matter, the sheer size of the Exposure Zone made clearing it in any sort of a timely manner problematic, which was why they were fencing in each newly cleared chunk day by day, just in case they needed more time to finish chewing this chunk they’d bit off. But if they couldn’t trust the fences...

As these ruminations had passed through his head, Gustav and his squad had gone back to systematically working their way forward. With any luck, they could make up for lost time; the last thing they needed was to leave a salient in the line.

Of course, the last thing they _really_ needed was to leave a grossling alive and unspotted because they’d rushed through clearing their area, so Gustav brought his mind back to the here-and-now and his work therein.

Glancing back, Gustav was glad to see that the sweeper squad was even now examining the grossling and its former abode of convenience in the stump. They were trained observers and trackers who would soon be certain of whether there had been a breach, or merely an incident.

It seemed like hours passed as Gustav listened for their whistled signal, even as his squad made their way further and further from the stump. Finally, though, the signal came: incident, not breach. All squads to continue pushing forward.

Gustav crossed his fingers against another incident, and moved ahead...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this.


End file.
